“It’s no such a thing!” exclaimed Zoséphine so forcibly that Madame Sosthène’s sunbonnet turned around, and a murmur of admonition came from it. But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to Bonaventure:
“Oh, you—you can’t even guess well.” She was about to say more, but suddenly hushed. Behind them a galloping horse drew near, softly pattering along the turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a quiet trot.
The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new suit of gray home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust into the tops of his sturdy russet boots, and the jacket ending underneath a broad leather belt that carried a heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican spurs tinkled their little steel bells against their huge five-spiked rowels on his heels. He scarcely sat in the saddle-tree—from hat to spurs you might have drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in shoulders, thighs, and all.
“Adjieu,” said the young centaur; and Sosthène replied from the creaking calèche, “Adjieu, ’Thanase,” while the rider bestowed his rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthène’s eyes met his, and her lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure’s gaze was hostile. A word or two passed between uncle and nephew, including a remark and admission that the cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with a touch of the spur, the young horseman galloped on.
It seems enough to admit that Zoséphine’s further remarks were silly without reporting them in full.
“Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked up I should have laughed in his face!” etc. “Well,” she concluded, after much such chirruping, “there’s one comfort—he doesn’t care a cent for me. If I should die to-morrow, he would forget to come to the funeral. And you think I wouldn’t be glad? Well, you’re mistaken, as usual. I hate him, and I just know he hates me! Everybody hates me!”
The eyes of her worshipper turned upon her. But she only turned her own away across the great plain to the vast arching sky, and patted the calèche with a little foot that ached for deliverance from its Sunday shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of the way home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice from the boiling battery.